


my heart is a map (it leads to you)

by kotaface (aveyune23)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Angst, Cloud and Tifa take a lot of EXTRA wrong turns, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Just Friends to Not Just Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, Romance, Updated sporadically, but that's not why we're here is it?, chronic miscommunication, if these 2 idiots just TALKED TO EACH OTHER, love's journey often involves some wrong turns, seriously everything in FF7 would have been avoided
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27001084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aveyune23/pseuds/kotaface
Summary: Theirs was a lifetime of choices. Mistakes and wrong turns and missed opportunities, giving in and letting go. Battered and broken by trauma, held together by a promise and the flicker of faith. Despite everything Destiny had thrown at them… they’d made it.(The crossroads where their lives intersected and the paths they walked on their way to each other.)
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 11
Kudos: 47





	my heart is a map (it leads to you)

**Author's Note:**

> Fun facts: I started this fic back in May, the same day I wrote and published "threshold (the ache and the ruin)". It sat in my google drive in pieces for months until frustration at a different fic drove me to organizing this one instead. It's my 'backburner' fic -- the one I work on when I should probably be working on something else but don't want to, or I'm in a block and need to work through it on something easy. I say 'easy' because there are no surprises in this fic -- this is Cloud and Tifa's story as it's laid out in the Compilation, analyzed and interpreted by me, and turned into a roadmap of sorts.
> 
> Please note: this fic will be updated sporadically.
> 
> (Sincerest thanks to my darling Discord Wives for their love and support and also for helping me come up with a title.)

Cloud is 7 when it first happens. 

He doesn’t know what _it_ is, exactly, and he wouldn’t be able to explain it to his mother or anyone else, even if he’d wanted to (which he doesn’t.) He just knows that something weird happens to his chest when he sees her. His next door neighbor.

_Tifa._

It’s not like they’re close. Their houses are side by side but they don’t talk much. They’re in school together but they don’t interact. She has lots of friends. He doesn’t. He’s not good at talking to people, and he’s pretty sure that’s something you have to be good at if you want friends. It doesn't bother him, though, because all the kids in this town are stupid. Not her. Just them. It’s only that she’s surrounded by them all the time, and he’s—

He’s kicking cans while she’s smiling and playing with her dumb friends and that’s when he feels something go wrong under his ribs. He frowns, clenches his jaw and looks at his feet and delivers a solid blow to a rock with his boot, sending it skittering across the dirt. And then she laughs and his head snaps toward the sound and that’s when she notices him. She waves her arm and calls his name and it makes the grip around his lungs even worse, so he looks away. He starts walking, uncomfortable and uncertain and he can hear her calling after him but something’s strangling him from the inside and he’s scared, so he doesn’t stop. Even after she demands to know if he’s ignoring her. 

He is. He has to.

He has to ignore her because something is telling him that if he doesn’t, whatever’s creeping like vines around his ribcage won’t go away.

By the time Cloud is far enough away to escape the feeling of her eyes on his back, he’s outside the village and swearing to himself that he’ll never look at her again. Because the wrongness in his chest isn’t gone, it’s only faded, and he’s terrified. He doesn’t know why, just knows it’s her fault. So he vows then and there to ignore her, her and her stupid friends, hoping that it’s enough to make the pain go away, hoping he’ll be able to breathe again.

_(But he doesn’t, and he won’t.)_

:::

:::

Tifa is 6 and playing with her friends when she first catches him staring.

Cloud’s got that frown on his face like he always does, so Tifa jumps up and calls his name, waving her arm for him to come and play. His face does something weird, and his blue blue eyes stare at her like she’s a monster from the mountain, something ugly, something scary. She says his name again, a question this time, but he turns and walks away with his shoulders bunched up to his ears. His hands are clenched into fists. She frowns. What’s wrong with him?

She shouts after him, _are you ignoring me?_ but he keeps walking, back stiff and fists tight, and her friends are laughing, calling him _weirdo, loser._ She snaps at them to stop, and they do, though their amusement lingers in the smirks on their mouths. She ignores it, turning back to watch Cloud walk away, confusion settling into her chest. Is he okay?

Her friends drag her back into the game they’re playing. She doesn’t let Cloud’s rudeness bother her for long. They’re not really friends, after all. She just wanted to be nice. She wouldn’t mind being his friend, though. He doesn’t seem to have any. Maybe they would be friends already, if he stopped running away.

She forgets about the whole thing after a while, but his frightened eyes stay with her for a long time.

_(Did she do something wrong...?)_

* * *

He’s 9 when Tifa’s mother dies and he follows her up the mountain.

She looks so determined when she runs out of her house. Her stupid friends emerge after her and the familiar wellspring of anger and jealousy bubbles up in Cloud’s gut at not being being among them. He’s ducked behind the fence that separates their houses, watching her take off up the street in her blue dress. His chest squeezes when he sees the tear tracks on her cheeks. _Where is she going?_ He wants to go after her but he’s too nervous to follow.

It’s not until after he sees the looks on her friends’ faces that he makes a decision.

They look _scared._ Their stupid, mocking faces are wide with anxiety, and if _they’re_ scared, then that means Tifa’s going somewhere she shouldn’t be.

The thing in his ribs constricts hard enough to force a strangled noise out of his mouth. It might have been her name.

He runs after them.

She’s going to the mountain, he realizes, and it sends a jolt of fear down his spine. Why? Why would she do that? It’s _dangerous_ to go up there. She’s faster than her friends, ahead of them by yards and yards, and Cloud’s torn between racing forward to pass them and lagging behind so they don’t notice him. He wants to be next to her, to ask her what on Gaia she thinks she’s doing, sprinting towards Mt. Nibel in her blue shoes with tears in her eyes. He finds out when she clears the tree-line and waits for the others to catch up; Cloud lingers far enough behind that they can’t see him but he can still hear her voice. She wants to know what’s beyond the mountain.

Jealousy bleeds red into his eyes when one of her friends tells her that people die on Mt. Nibel and another confirms it, _no one crosses it alive._ Cloud should be the one telling her those things. He should be the one discouraging her from what she’s about to do. Because it’s clear to him now, even before she says it, and it makes him scared enough to puke.

Tifa wants to find her mom, and she thinks she’ll find her on the other side of the mountain.

The rocks and bramble don't slow her down. Her friends hesitate and the anger that suddenly flares up inside of Cloud is the strongest he’s ever felt. Two of her friends decide to keep following; one panics and turns back down the path.

Cloud wants to hit the boy when he passes by at the foot of the trail, but instead settles for stepping out in time to be seen and delivering the most accusing glare he can muster before taking off.

He catches up to them at the bridge. Tifa’s already halfway across, her hands gripping the ropes as the wind screams through the chasm beneath. The two boys that followed this far take a few tentative steps onto the slats before rushing back to solid ground. Cloud’s right behind them and they almost knock him over in their retreat. He glares at them, too, and they stare back, the whites of their eyes visible all around, before tripping and falling over themselves in their haste to get back to the village.

He wants to shout at them, yell at them for being cowards and letting her come up here in the first place. But a glance ahead reveals that she’s almost to the other side, and getting to her is the only thing that matters now.

He’s scared, terrified — the bridge is rickety, the wind roars, the rope feels thin under his hands — but he crosses as fast as he can, his chest getting tighter and tighter with every breath he breathes. He chokes when she disappears around a bend, when he loses sight of her blue dress and blue shoes. The cold wind beats against him but he’s already gone numb from the fear that he’ll lose her for good. The idiots weren’t wrong, people _do_ die on this mountain. What if she becomes one of them? What if he doesn’t get to her in time? What if what if what if what if—

He’s scrambling over the lip of a steep grade when he hears the crack of shifting rock. He makes it over in time to see Tifa’s foot slip, for her arms to shoot out in a vain attempt to steady herself, but then she’s dropping and he dashes across the distance, stretching out his hands to grab her, to stop her from going over —

Their fingertips brush.

He shouts.

She screams.

She falls.

_(He follows.)_

:::

:::

His ears are ringing. His chest hurts. Someone’s yelling at him. A man, demanding, _why would you bring her here?_

He groans, tries to sit up and then sits up too fast because he remembers why he can’t breathe, why his lungs feel crushed beneath the whole mountain range. He opens his eyes in time to see a man from the village lift a limp figure into his arms. Blue shoes and dark hair dangle and suddenly his stomach is pushing its way up his throat.

_What the hell’s the matter with you?_

His knees burn and bleed. He’s gonna be sick.

_She might die!_

He wasn’t fast enough. He couldn’t save her.

_(He retches and retches but the shame won’t come up.)_

:::

:::

She's in a coma.

The day it happens, his mom cleans the gravel from his knees and patches them up. She says it’s not his fault, no matter what her dad claims.

On the second day, he sits in his room at his window and watches her house, waiting for news that she’s okay. He thinks about praying, but he doesn’t know how.

He spends the third day in his yard, picking at scabs that have barely started forming, until his fingers and knees are bloody and his mom scolds him about infection.

On the fourth day he works up the courage to go to her house and knock. He wants to see her. Her father says no and slams the door.

Her idiot friends find him on the fifth day. He’s staring up at her window from his side of the fence with red eyes, and they laugh and laugh and call him names, _crybaby loser failure._

Day six he collects as many bottles as he can from the garbage bin behind the tavern. He throws and shatters and smashes each and every one against a pile of rocks outside town. It doesn’t help. It feels like the glass is embedded in his chest, instead of the dirt.

The jerks corner him by the mansion on day seven. They push him into the fence, sneer and tell him that she might not make it and that it's all his fault. They give him a black eye and a bloody mouth. His mom adds more bandages, but she doesn’t say anything.

The next day, a full week after she falls, he tracks down her so-called friends. He’s all scabs and split lips and swollen eyelids. They mock him. Ask if he’s come back for seconds. They think he’s a pushover. They don’t know he wouldn’t let his mom put ice on his eye or use a potion on his knees. They don’t know he’s been picking scabs all week and watching them bleed.

Cloud throws his first punch that day. He breaks Idiot #1’s nose. He cuts his knuckles on Idiot #2’s teeth and knocks them loose. He shoves Idiot #3 to the ground while the others are down and kicks the boy in the side over and over and over until something grabs him and hauls him away. There’s shrieking and screaming, like monsters howling in the mountains. His blood boils and rushes through his ears and all he can see is red, liquid and hot like the splatters on his fist.

His mother gives him something that quiets the screaming and makes him sleep. It’s not until the next morning that he learns Tifa is awake, that she’s alive, and the vise around his chest finally falls away and he takes his first full breath in days.

Things change. Cloud wants to be close to her, but he can’t look her in the eye because it just reminds him that he didn’t save her, so he lingers in her periphery instead. The thing in his chest tightens around him a bit more every day. It constricts like a python when he realizes she won’t talk to him because she blames him, just like her dad does. It slithers up his throat and drips green venom when he hears her laugh at something one of her stupid friends says. It coils around his fear of rejection and his loneliness and twists it into anger and loathing for everything and everyone. 

Except her. Never her.

He picks fights, even ones that he knows he can’t win. When his mom asks why, while she’s patching him up for the umpteenth time, Cloud just tells her he doesn’t know. He’ll never be able to explain that it’s the only way he can ignore the pain in his chest.

Maybe it was his fault. Maybe he shouldn’t have followed her.

_(He’d do it again in a heartbeat.)_

* * *

She’s 13 when Cloud asks her to meet him at the water tower.

It’s a surprise, to say the least. He’s always around — they have some classes together, and he _is_ her neighbor — but they don’t talk much. Tifa’s tried to get him to talk so many times, but he always stammers about needing to be somewhere, if he doesn’t flat-out run away. Her friends think he’s weird. They call him a freak when they think she isn’t listening. She hates it, because she doesn’t think he’s a freak. She thinks he’s shy, maybe a little awkward. And sure, Cloud always darts away the second she approaches him, but she’s caught him looking at her before, and he doesn’t have that scowl on his face like he usually does. He’s actually kind of cute when he’s not scowling. She’d tell him, too, if only he’d hold still long enough.

So when Cloud comes up to her after school — on purpose, on his own two feet, of his own free will — and blurts out _can you meet me at the water tower tonight I need to tell you something_ before high-tailing it in the opposite direction without waiting for her reply, Tifa is more than surprised. She’s downright shocked.

She’s also a little pleased. And a bit nervous. Boys only ask girls to the water tower after curfew when it’s a date. She never thought Cloud would ask her on a date. It makes her cheeks warm. She wonders what he wants to talk about, and she thinks about it all evening, until her papa is asleep and she slips out the back door.

Cloud jumps when she rounds the corner of the cistern and says hello. His eyes are wide when she smiles and steps closer; he looks away while she tucks her dress beneath her legs to sit beside him on the edge of the platform.

Tifa asks what he wanted to talk about, wishing he would look at her. She wore a nice dress, even dabbed on a bit of the lip gloss she hides from her papa, because she wanted to look pretty for their date. But he stares resolutely out at the rooftops, and she realizes he’s nervous, too.

Cloud takes a deep breath and tells her he’s leaving.

Something small snaps inside Tifa’s chest. Her throat closes up and she can’t breathe for a moment. She turns away from him so that he doesn’t see the way her face contorts with surprise and disappointment.

Not a date, then.

It doesn’t quite make sense to her why she’s upset by the news. All the guys are leaving. She says as much, looking down at her swinging feet.

Cloud twists his head to look at her, his blue blue eyes wide as he stutters out _but I’m not like them,_ and a little voice inside of her agrees. He isn’t like the others. The thought feels brand new yet so obvious, as if she’s known that her whole life. It leaves her wondering about him, trying to recall how she knows it's true when they’ve barely spoken more than a few sentences to each other.

He turns back to the rooftops ahead of him, his voice more confident as he tells her he’s leaving to join SOLDIER. His back is straighter. He sounds so sure of himself when he says he’ll be _the best of the best._ Only the side of his face is visible from where she sits, but it's enough to tell that his expression is wide-open in a way she’s never seen before. She’s used to him scowling, with his shoulders bunched near his ears, his eyes cast down. The contrasting openness there now, the way he talks about this dream of his, makes her heart constrict, like something strange has crawled inside and wrapped its fingers around it and squeezed.

They aren’t that close. They hardly talk. In fact, this might be the most he’s ever said to her in one sitting. Learning that he’s leaving shouldn’t bother her this much, but it does.

She doesn’t want Cloud to leave. She’ll miss him.

_(She misses him every single day.)_

:::

:::

He’s 14 when Tifa makes him promise.

Working up the nerve to ask her to the water tower almost killed him, but it was something he had to do. Cloud wanted her to know that he was leaving for Midgar in the spring to join SOLDIER.

Truth be told, he didn’t expect her to come, so he was surprised — and relieved — when she did. He definitely didn’t expect her to show up looking the way she did, in a blue dress that’s nothing like the one she wore that day on Mt. Nibel. He didn’t expect her to have glossy lips and a smile that snatches the breath from his lungs.

Cloud always knew Tifa was pretty, but he has no idea how to process the way she looks — and the way she’s looking at him — right now.

So he turns away and takes a deep breath and tells her he’s leaving. When she says she’s not surprised, he panics. That wasn’t what she was supposed to say. She was supposed to be — what? Upset? He’s a sap for hoping she’d be. She doesn’t notice him. That’s why he asked her here in the first place. If she knows he’s leaving to join SOLDIER, maybe she’ll finally pay attention.

The way she responds doesn’t give Cloud a lot of hope. Tifa is practically dismissive when he tells her how long he’ll be gone. His ribs feel like they’re going to crack. If he’d known that she would react this way — that is, no reaction at all — he never would have asked her to come.

That’s why her request throws him so hard. She acts like they’re talking about the weather, and then she turns around and asks him to promise her something.

He’s completely baffled. Gapes at her as she explains _that’s what heroes do,_ as she leans in closer with her pink lips and wide eyes and insists that he promise to save her.

Cloud wonders if she can read his mind, if she can see through him, because there’s no other explanation for how deadly her request is. There’s no way Tifa knows how often the memories of that day play over and over in his mind, how he still feels the burn of bile in his mouth when he remembers that he didn’t save her. She can’t have guessed that it's the whole reason he’s leaving in the first place.

She doesn’t notice him. So how is it possible she knows right where to land the killing blow?

Tifa’s leaning in close enough that Cloud can see the shimmer in her lip gloss, and the way she’s smiling at him only reinforces the notion that she knows what he’s thinking. He’s pretty sure his heart is going to beat right out of his chest. Panic makes his muscles tense; he wants to run but he’s trapped by that smile and how her eyes crinkle at the corners. Finally, he manages to produce the words she wants.

_Fine. I promise._

She sits back, apparently pleased, and tilts her chin up towards the sky. All he can do is stare at her, awestruck and confused and torn to pieces by the tendrils of whatever it is she planted in the rows between his ribs all those years ago.

_(He would have promised her every star in the sky if she’d asked him to.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! 
> 
> Come scream with (or at) me on twitter or tumblr.


End file.
